And we all know people with something negative to say, are usually a lot louder and quite happy to say it. For all the talk of Immortal good or bad, it is something many guilds strive to achieve. Whether its for better or worse is going to be quite subjective.

What might be considered "unnecessary tension, spite and a dreadful mood" for some, really could be a godsend for others - an achievement that really encourages people to pickup their game, know the fights and encounter mechanics well and execute them accordingly. If guilds aren't prepared to accept those conditions, then just don't do it.

I think an achievement that can bring people together with a common goal, encourage them to focus and demand an understanding of mechanics, is a good thing. Is The Immortal really a good way to do that? Well thats a good discussion to be had. But regardless of what conclusion people come to, it's going to be highly subjective.

My only real gripe about the current The Immortal achievement is that it's (for most people) the hardest of the tier 7 achievements. To me the top of this tier is (or should be) Sarth +3 and the 6 minute Maly. While not dying for a full Naxx reset is technically more difficult to achieve it just feels dumb as what is currently defining the pinnacle of tier 7 content. It could be argued that the other two achievements aren't difficult enough to warrant the mount but to me that's topic of it's own. As stand alone achievements I think the Undying/Immortal are great.

I have to say that I, for one, am exceedingly glad with achievements like the Immortal. I'm fully aware that the odds are low I'll ever get the title in my guild, but I just really like achievements that actually reward you for doing things the -right- way.
It seems the majority of achievements are based on doing things in some stupid, awkward, backwards or otherwise not-as-intended way. Rewarding people for proper play is far more interesting than rewarding them for being stupid.

There are other ways to promote a common goal for a guild while encouraging better play without leaving it up to an achievement that engenders ill will and spite if someone makes a mistake. The fact that if you screw up an Immortal run, you're relegated to trying again the next week makes it incredibly frustrating if someone does screw up. Fostering that kind of resentment in guilds is counter to keeping the playerbase happy in my opinion.

There are numerous guilds out there that know the fights in Naxx with their eyes closed that don't have Immortal yet due to whatever issues that have arisen during a run. I realize that's the point, but there have been other options suggested here - namely speed runs - that would advocate the same sort of common goal as Immortal without the negative drawback of a death should something untoward happen not to mention a mistake, while a setback, wouldn't automatically disqualify you until the next reset.

Kind of a silly way to look at it, the other achievements are the 'hard modes' of Naxx, the only difference is the lack of reward. All hard modes in the game are 'doing the fight in a backwards' hard type way. They ARE intended, because the achievements are there. If there were no achievement based on them it might be a plausible position to take. I'd call burning the heck out of the 4h much less how the fight is 'properly' done than the achievement version, for instance, and people not doing the hard modes now, reward or not, are the ones being rewarded for sloppy/stupid play.

Immortal doesn't have any impact on the game except asking people to play more carefully, which is fine for most people on progression content but not as much on farming content. Sometimes squeezing out that extra 3 seconds of dps before Sapphiron bomb lands, or just dispersion through it is fun for some people on contents they've defeated two thousand times at 60 and now another two thousand times at 80 with AoE damage not scaling up at all.

It is also extremely annoying to lose immortal to disconnects or things that are completely RNG based such as Kel'Thuzad mind controlling one or both of the offtanks. Can that be solved through positioning and having another 5 backup offtanks? sure, but the annoying RNG factor still exists where a bad RNG tolerates very little mistakes.

To me beating contents by taking half as long and being far less-geared than other people shows achievements more than a careful clearing through Naxx when you're doing that place just for the sake of raiding and maybe a couple pieces of loot off KT. This is why i think Ulduar immortal achievement is done in a much better fashion. Will there be more people running around with Immortal V2 title? probably. Does it matter? not really; it's not even part of the meta for the new protodrake, and killing Algalon is a much bigger achievement than defeating all bosses in easy mode without dying anyway.

Exactly, as well as killing anub before first swarm, just tanking through first swarm. AoEing all adds on Faerlina and heal through the enrage, killing Noth before the first teleport. All of these makes the encounter even easier than the already easy "intended" version, and they are definitely the preferred method even during immortal.

So I don't think anyone argues that Immortal can be screwed up by a lot of silly things like random disconnects at the wrong time. That said, I also don't feel like anything much extraordinary is required to get it. Three resets ago, we decided to start "going for it" in my casual guild that managed a server 12th on Sarth 3D/25.

A lot of our good players have been spotty attendees of lately due to real life, lack of interest in Naxx due to loot, whatever. Fine. But we decided we had about 15-20 people with a real shot at the meta achievement and that we'd go for it. I read several threads here for tips, I checked out Fusion's site, I tried my hardest to set the right tone for the raids.

When we had people DCing on attempt #1, I sat them out for Heigan and kept them in a safe zone for Thaddius. We prepare the backup plans we thought of, remembered every stupid death on an easy boss we could, etc. We reminded people how not to die and tried to keep the tension medium -- no one should be so relaxed they slack, but ideally they shouldn't be chewing their nails off from the get go.

We had deaths on Horseman and Sapphiron, so it was a no go -- but got our first Shocking We came back, had new things to warn people of, etc. and I made bad calls as raid leader that botched attempt #2. Then, two days ago, we got it. So yeah, we're in the ~2% that have the achievement. I don't ever want to do it again. It was an overly tense night. But damned if that's not an achievement.

It sets us apart a bit. We aren't loaded with the number of elite WoW players most of your guilds have. We tolerate people we know are bad for long periods of time because we don't have reliable people to replace them.

I think the Ulduar version is better -- as do many of you. But I feel like a lot of the complaints here are from people that didn't get it done or fear they won't. The top guild on our server made it their priority almost immediately after Naxx opened. They got it awfully fast. I imagine they had people ready to backup tank KT adds or Guardian Spirit someone or whatever. But the point is asiding disconnects, almost everything is manageable if you actually prepare. The achievement probably has no more or less RNG than a Sarth 3D attempt where blazes and lava strikes are everywhere. It's just the penalty for failure in a given week is so high on Immortal. And that's why the Ulduar fix seems about right.

The Uludar version is, without a doubt, better. Maybe a lot less glamorous, but it's humanly possible. Personally, I would have no objections to having the old iteration again, provided it wasn't part of the meta achievement.

Although, even having it on a single reset basis wouldn't be bad if you could get away with deaths on 9 out of 10 encounters, for instance.

I'm really glad they change how the immortal achievement works for ulduar. I bet you haven't really face problems when everything is perfect and suddenly you see a person disconnected in a charge clump and have a polarity shift right after or even disconnected on 4 horseman where he was standing on a void zone and died. When you come into a situation where you have at least 3 to 4 raiders disconnect on every single fights which causes a death. Do you realized how much frustration and strain this will become?

Getting immortal for my guild now with this many random disconnects every week is almost trying to strike 1 million dollars lottery. Therefore the changes on the immortal has made it slightly less penalized on those who has connection issue.

I think we can argue back and forth all we want about Immortal, but what it comes down to is both skill (in the form of awareness and not doing stupid things) and luck (in the form of a stable connection, for example). If you are in a guild that has several people with high-triple to low-quadruple digit latencies, with spikes, that definitely adds a new layer to the Immortal requirements. Same if you happen to have two tanks who have somewhat dodgy connections (one connecting from the other end of the world, I moved recently and are still fighting my telco tooth and nail - slowly, slowly working out the problems with them). Yes, I know how it feels if you start a fight and suddenly the tanks don't move any more. Or a healer has to switch because whoops, one of the tanks healers DC'd. Or 5 DPS/OT just drop (fun on 4H, which in a twist of fate seems to be the fight where it happens most often).

But, that can also mask the other layer of requirement. Despite that situation, I don't want to argue that "it's just our bad luck" that we didn't get Immortal yet. Truth to be told, we didn't work too much on it. Maybe because it is harder for us than for other people. But we really should not underestimate the amount of focus it takes. And maybe we're missing that too *shrug*. I just feel that blaming bad luck, as susceptible as this achievement is to it, feels like a cop-out more often than not. I don't have Immortal, and I'm fine with that fact.

I would even go as far as argue that the new Ulduar style is worse than the old Naxx one. Although Kel as one of the more luck-based bosses when it comes to no deaths is a bit harsh. People need a carrot dangling in front of them, and it gives them something to work on. They could've also done a "Immortal light" (new style) for the Ulduar meta achievement, and a "immortal hardcore" (old style) for fluffs like title. But oh well.

I'm glad they changed it, but not because of the D/C-stress. It is because they've now tied additional loot to hard modes, which you'd rather not attempt during an Immortal run. As was stated above, running a week on crappy loot only to have the Immortal Title ripped away because of a random screw up/disconnect/dumb move/whatever at the last 5% on Y-S is not pleasant.

In Naxxramas, there's no such benefit, other than maybe not getting some of the other achievements. I don't see that as a problem.

As a sidenote: I don't expect to ever get the problems you mentioned above. Just this week we've had two melee that managed to die on Patchwerk (don't ask). Long as we have some guild members like that, I don't see Immortal as a reality.

If you could wipe and reset on any boss when someone died and keep your achievement running, Immortal would be pretty easy. None of the encounters in Naxx are actually hard to keep 25 people alive through except arguably KT (and he depends a lot on who he MCs and who he frost blasts when).

Disconnects aside, Immortal was the achievement that was impossible (or required extreme luck) for guilds carrying passengers. And they don't have to be bad players at all: some people are simply not very good at focusing for three hours. Most guilds have a few people who top DPS charts but simply tend to die in fires/cleaves/whatever way more than they should, and those kind of players don't work on an Immortal run.

It's one more achievement that sets "the best" apart from those who are merely good enough to do Sarth+3D and Malygos. It's thus inevitably going to create frustration and stress in guilds who aren't good enough to get it but don't know that, just the same that Brutallus did and just the same that M'uru did. (The difference being of course that Immortal is mostly divorced form gear and requires concentration over three hours whereas for M'uru you needed top gear and still had to be almost flawless, albeit only for ten minutes.)

The way they implemented Immortal in Ulduar, as far as I understand, with not requiring one reset to kill all bosses within one reset makes it much more reasonable achievement than others. With that change I have no problem with it being part of the meta.


I do not see how that is different from what you suggested over the long run, if anything the way they did it makes it less stressful to wipe to a boss on purpose trying to get an achievement.

I don't really have a problem with Immortal if someone was being stupid and fail at living due to lack of awareness. I do have a problem when it's not player problem. Two examples we have encountered: KT MCed the offtank who had 3 adds on him because 3 spawned on his side, and before the other tank can get to him to taunt one off due to needing to wait for Frost Blast, he gets MCed and a healer next to him gets killed. Would changing positioning help? maybe, does it make it less stupid RNG? no. Another examples was on Grobbulus, our tank was not even moving, and Grobulus decided to turn around for some reason and spray the entire melee with slime, all 6 of which decided to jump one rogue and killed him instantly. These kind of occasional flaws on boss behavior makes immortal extra annoying to get.

From my view, the most annoying thing about Immortal was that it just wasn't fun. It was interesting, but you basically had to ask the raid to play conservatively and not do anything fun the entire night. And if it failed, to not get angry at the person who did whatever and to come back and do it again next week.

The only minor issue I have with the new Immortal is the inability for one boss (Freya, possibly) to go back up into hard mode. For every other boss, a failed Immortal attempt can be reset and redone as hard mode. Otherwise, it's perfect for an instance where the difficulty is concentrated on the encounters and not making sure everyone is paying attention for three hours and are not disconnecting.

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In other 3.1 Achievement news, Insane in the Membrane requires all the reputations to be at the right levels to get the achievement. - Link

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And in guild-destroying thoughts, who else is ready to race their guildmates for the 10-man Yogg-Saron zero watcher and/or Algalon Feat of Strength. Hopefully they can't be done in week one...

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Updated with latest PTR-

Glory of the Ulduar Raider 25 Complete the Normal Difficulty raid achievements listed below.
Reward: Rusted Proto-Drake

* Orbit-uary
* Stokin' the Furnace
* Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare -- Changed.
* Heartbreaker
* I Choose You, Steelbreaker
* Disarmed -- Changed, kill both arms at the same time before killing Kologarn
* Crazy Cat Lady
* I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare -- Changed, hard mode of Hodir
* Lose Your Illusion -- Changed, requires actually beating Thorim on hard mode
* Freya + 3 [PH] -- Changed, hard mode of Freya
* Firefighter -- Added, hard mode of Mimiron
* I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning
* One Light in the Darkness -- Changed, slightly harder version of Yogg-Saron

The new Immortal (renamed to Champion/Conqueror of Ulduar and giving that title) is now not part of the achievement. It might have been removed due to the renaming of the achievement, and will be back in a later build.

Related to that, the Feat of Strength for 10 man Yogg-Saron with no Watchers has been removed.

World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King Achievements

Sucks for the people that happened to be sat that night, but hey - no drakes for the unlucky, I guess. Especially if they happened to be there for every kill except K'T and then still didn't get the achievement. Still, as long as the raid leader and officers have it, that's what matters.... ?

My point is that if you want to be fair to all your members, achievements aren't something you do only once. I much prefer the new version for Ulduar, because it doesn't have the (frankly moronic) factor that you can contribute for almost the entire achievement and then luck out because you happened not to be in for the end boss. Furthermore, once you get to the stage of making sure you get the achievement for everyone in the group, you can swap people in and out on a boss by boss basis to make sure each one gets what they need.

And in this scenario,it is not an "achievement" anymore. Its more of "okay,we will do it sooner or later,lets just fail on this and fail on that,doesnt matter,we'll just do everything else and in next week do the things we missed". That sounds just like the reason for changing loot to token-system,except the part that achievements shouldnt have such kind of system,they arent there so everyone with basic button humping skills could get it. They are in the place so you can discern,who is able to do it and who cant.

During wotlk beta I remember they said that there was a 1 minute windows for server first achievements, but on our server we had 2 players rush lvl 80 together and reached lvl 80 at the exact same second (killing mobs with the exact same xp #). They had both their class realm first, but only one got the 80 realm first achievement (the first that came on the logs...).

So i'm not really sure that 1 minute windows is still in place.

The current Immortal doesn't necessarily do what you state achievements should do. That's not to say that the new one is any better, but I think you're over-romanticizing achievements if you think that the "meh we can fail them for now, we'll pick them up later" mentality isn't going to be present. Heck, that's how I view the current Immortal. Trying for it is fine, but if someone messes up then whatever, I'll go for it later. Being able to say "Whatever, we'll get that later when we feel like it" doesn't at all remove the fact that you still have to, y'know, actually jump through the hoop. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you though, I'm not certain I'm reading your post right.

I guess it come down to what you feel defines "the best". The ability to play it safe and concentrate 110% for an entire night on content that felt undertuned in blues is an admirable skill (that obviously many don't have) but does it really qualify you as being the best at something? There are players that would be good to have along for The Immortal but tend to crumble during tightly tuned speed runs or consistently fall short during dps races. Then there are the players that make you say "Wow! I can't believe we pulled that off!" on a regular basis but also go down in a blaze of glory more regularly.

In my opinion neither skill set in and of itself can be used to define "the best" and for real success you need a mix. Sarth + 3 and the 6 Minute Malygos need a bit of both in there. The Immortal on the other hand seems to be all of one and none of the other with the annoying addition of taking hours to complete so very prone to lag and luck related disaster. I think the non reset limited Ulduar Immortal v2 is much more balanced than the current version (though I personally don't think it deserves a title and wouldn't have had that been their route in Naxx either).

Again, I like the achievement in general I just think it was poor planning to have it be the crowning gem of the Tier 7 Meta.

It only announces the first person, but every eligible person wound up with the Feat of Strength. I figured that out when I did the same thing with a friend. Looking at your Realm's Achievement Firsts page (The World of Warcraft Armory), you can see that they both have credit for the achievement, so a window still exists, though I can't say for sure it's one minute.

It's not mentioned as much as the personal title, but one of the most desirable things about "The Immortal" is its value with regards to recruiting power and associated guild recognition on the server. "Wow did you see X player's guild got Immortal" will spread throughout the server like a wildfire, you can't buy that kind of advertising and publicity so easily!

Or so we think. I'd be interested to hear from some guilds who did get Immortal and whether they felt or saw any noticeable difference in their recruiting power and applications to the guild. Also whether the actual quality changed (in addition to quantity).

Obviously it's going to vary greatly between servers/guilds - but, like it or not - having "The Immortal" on a guilds resume is a key performance indicator many raiding minded players notice and will give much respect to. Especially when it's a key differentiation between your guild and others on the server.